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Vuo's future, its roadmap, its selling, its community ...

Like I said to Smokris, I just wanted to add my 2 penny ideas for Vuo's future and share them here. Why not, it could perhaps help or change the way Vuo is sold, funded and developed.

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The 2 QUESTIONS I have in Mind are :

1 - How can the Vuo Team MAKE THE BEST MONEY out of their software ?

2 - How can the community LOVE, get excited and FUND Vuo the best way ?

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For the community users to pay the most money, they have to feel Vuo matches their needs & they have to be excited and active for Vuo's Roadmap & new features. This, the Vuo team already did understand amazingly well, but I wanted to push it further !
In fact, when I look at the roadmap & the feature requests, my requests are so low in the priorities, I would not have to pay for the 5 next Vuo releases at least before one of my requests would be implemented.

If there are more users & customers like me out there, this means we are "disappointed " which is a LOSS of MONEY for the Vuo team, and that's sad too.

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To RESOLVE the 2 main questions, I could see 2 big things :

1 - BOTH the ability to vote for requests the FREE way + the PAID way

2 - To release MORE users requests every release

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In fact.

A - There used to be paid votes, now there is only free votes. Why not have best of both worlds ? Paid & Free ?

Every active user would receive 5 free credits to vote for the next release (this counter could restart at each release).

We could also buy credits to vote.

The requests would be listed once, but could receive both free votes and paid votes.

Paid requests could be some kind of bidding auctions (there could be a minimum set for a request to be implemented)

At a minimal amount of paid-votes, the user would get the next release for free (let's say for example for a user who would have voted 100 $)

Of course, the personal hiring of the Vuo team would still exist !

B - Release more requests by splitting and distribute the requests more efficiently

Vuo 1.1 included 15 releases and bug fixes.

This included 7 feature requests the Vuo team chose to implement, based on some criterias.

But why not split the amount of features releases better ? It could be splitted for example this way

1 - 5 features selected by the Vuo Team

2 - 5 top free voted requests

3 - 5 top paid voted requests

For this, ALL the roadmap features should be turned into features requests users could vote their priorities on.

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This MEANS

The users would be more excited ! Involved ! Their features will have more chance to be implemented !

This means they will pay more money for the Vuo Updates. Update more frequently !

Paid Requests is another chance for people to get their specific requests implemented sooner.

The money from the paid requests could be another great source of money for the Vuo Team !

That way,

1 - The Vuo team get's more money. The future of Vuo and its development gets even brighter.

2 - The users are happy, pay money and get real excited to use and love Vuo !

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That's it, see below a small mockup of what could be the free & paid requests look like on the site.

Please take this as no offense, perhaps the Vuo team is already making good money, but I simply wanted to share my thoughts on how sometimes we can feel disappointed, but also how much I love Vuo and how much I look forward to its future !!!

Comments

There would still just be one list of requests, one same list ! But people could vote for it using free or paid credits, which votes would be separated for a better request implementation (5 free + 5 paid requests).

Instead of doing 1 week only opened polls, the requests could be chosen for the over-next upcoming release. This would allow people to vote much longer. For example something like "Vuo 1.2's roadmap is already planned and we're working on it now for the next release, help us choose what you would like too see in Vuo 1.3 !

1 - That you changed the Feature request site page and listed ALL OF YOUR FEATURES PLANS to be voteable !!!
2 - That we can see the votes made by the Vuo Team !!!

Great steps already !!!

Now the ability

a - To make paid votes again in a separate addition to free votes
b - And a clean and simple new features repartition for each release (Vuo Team top voted and User top voted (free & paid)

would make this even more amazing !

For example, I saw the Vuo 1.2 roadmap will feature my "drag item/file to the application window and get path" request will be implemented, although it had only 5 votes or something. I'm really really happy for this, but that shows how sometimes user could feel confused when such poor voted features are implemented before features with 140 votes ... Perhaps that gives the users votes don't count.

Anyway, that's why I think that the fact that the Vuo Team votes now are visible is a great thing to help us understand how you choose new features, but a better Vuo Team/Users requests repartition based more on the TOP votes for each side is really something I'm longing for !

Thanks for the changes you already made this way and I'm fucking glad to see the community ideas count and help the way Vuo will spread and grow !

Hi, Bodysoulspirit! Thanks for your feedback. And thanks for participating in the community — you've created and shared some cool compositions, and helped spread the word about what Vuo can do. We really appreciate that.

We've been doing our best to listen and adapt to what the community wants. (I've read your email from the end of March several times and have been thinking about it; I apologize for not responding sooner. But I think it's good that we discuss this publicly here.)

I'm glad you like the recent changes to the feature request page — they were directly inspired by your feedback. We're still thinking about your other concerns and how to address them. Some initial thoughts:

Thanks for understanding that we need funding in order to make Vuo. We're eager to find a way to produce enough revenue from our work on Vuo so that Vuo can pay for itself, but we're not there yet.

The Kineme plugins were pretty much entirely funded by individual sponsors, so we anticipated that people would be interested in doing the same for Vuo, and therefore we created the old credits-based feature request system. It didn't work as well as we'd hoped. Very few people actually pledged credits (and only one person ever bought a credit — the rest we gave away for free or were included with subscription purchases). We got negative feedback from many people, saying that they felt like we were greedily double-charging them — once for the Vuo license, and again for the feature that they expected to be included with the Vuo license at no extra cost.

Even after switching from credits to votes, people seem very reluctant to use their votes. For the current open feature requests, about 1000 votes have been pledged, but there are still about 20,000 (!) votes floating out there that people haven't used. Some people have already told us we ask them too often to vote and respond to polls, and that we aren't completing feature requests quickly enough, so they feel like giving us feedback is wasting their time. I suspect that if we reset the votes every time we make a release — meaning people have to re-vote on everything every couple months — more people will feel like we're wasting their time.

Feature requests can take a wide variety of time to implement. For example, Windows or iOS or subcompositions will each take many months of work — whereas "drag item/file to the application window and get path" is something we can do in a day or two. If we were to say that strictly the top 5 voted feature requests will be in the next release, that might mean that the next release would take years! We don't want to make everyone wait that long between releases. So our strategy has been like this: We want to make a release about every 3 or 4 months. We start with the top-voted feature requests that will take a lot of work (many months), and try to find a way to make at least one fit into each release. Then we look at the smaller feature requests — if there is time left over, we pull a few of those into the release as well. (That's how we ended up fitting "drag item/file" into the plan for Vuo 1.2.)

Our rationale for adding Team Vuo votes to a feature request is that, since only people who have already purchased Vuo can vote, it excludes people who haven't yet purchased Vuo. So, based on the results of surveys and polls, and based on our intuition, we add votes to features we believe will help the community grow.

Thanks for the answer, and no worry for the email, I know you guys are very busy, and yeah great we can discuss it publicly here :) I'm really glad you read my email and understand I really want to add my 2 pennies to help you grow Vuo and spread it wide, because I love it.

Concerning your points :

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1 - CONCERNING THE VUO FUNDING AND THE WAY PEOPLE COME AND PAY FOR VUO

a - I'm sad to hear you've not reached the financial background needed yet. I think this will come over time. I do think your pricings are correct, I just think more people need to know Vuo. I think the 3 steps people can take to discover Vuo are great too, (trial, basic and pro). I'm already thinking to switch to Vuo Pro, just didn't do it yet cause I'm a student. I think as Vuo grows, you'll be able to keep some more nodes pro to increase the amount of people passing pro.

b - I also think nowadays, people really look how things LOOK. That's why I also like the fact that the new Feature Request page has some more flat elements. I think the Vuo Site's design could get some moderner design improvements (I don't want to blame the one behind the design of this site, I just wanted to compare it to some other websites).
The Vuo website's width and it's container is really visible & many buttons and bars have skeumorphic, surface details and 3D effects. This is really the opposite of what the actual design thing is about. I therefore don't know how much this first impression could make some people take no interest in Vuo.

Let's look at some of the most known or newest softwares & their websites (visual programming, prototyping, visual effects softwares ...):

I just made a quick mockup of what the actual Vuo site could look like if it was just flatten down (see the Site Mockup below).
Even if the main container has a fixed width (900 px for example) for text and buttons, the subcontainers their background colors can fill the whole browser width, giving the visitor the impression of a wider moderner not shrinked website.

But hey, I think you guys should make your website look like you want because Vuo is your product. And now that I know Vuo, I care more about Vuo's improvements than about how the site will look like, but I remember back then on my first visit, I was like Hum ? Strange site. But anyway, I might be completely wrong, just wanted to share my opinion for a moderner first glance that could help more people reach it.

c - In the same blood as point B, I like the idea to keep some nodes pro, it’s a must have for the Vuo Team, but I’m not sure about the fact to keep the dark mode pro. Because it looks much better then the normal version, and again, beauty counts when it comes to reach people ?!? …

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2 - CONCERNING THE MONEY PLEDGED CREDITS :

When I see how much money people put it such things as KICKSTARTER campaigns, I do believe people ARE ready to put money when it comes to make their WISHES come true. That’s why I think good and smart implemented money based credits work !

a - You say very few people pledged credits, but the community is still quite small. And that was back then ... But as the community grows ...

b - You also mention people gave negative feedback about the fact that they had the feeling they where double charged.
And that’s why I think the best thing would neither be pledged OR free, but BOTH free and pledged. And this would need to be splitted.
People will understand, that every time they upgrade, they get an amount of free credits to vote for and that BESIDE there is a POSSIBILITY to pledge credit to speedup some more SPECIFIC or personal wishes.

And if the amount of implemented feature requests are well distributed between free and pledged, I don’t understand why people should feel abused.

Perhaps the different votes could be smoother on the website then on my first mockup back on the start of this topic (See a new attached Votes Mockup below).
Both the votes would appear on the same feature request line.
And we could browse them with a « Sort nodes by » drop down menu.

Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I’m right. Perhaps people are ready to pledge, perhaps not. But I think if it’s well implemented, if it’s clear it’s a possibility and not an order, if it’s obvious where we can buy credits on the site, if it’s clear both the pledged and free votes count the same way with a determined amount of each of them to be implemented in each releases, I think people will understand it’s a great OPPORTUNITY to push some requests higher, and I think in the future as the community grows, more people will be ready to pledge.

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3 - CONCERNING THE FLOATING VOTES & POLLS :

Yes ! I think this amount votes not being used could have several reasons.

a - Some people tried or bought Vuo, but are not using it much, it’s on the shelf, waiting for them to use it again. Therefore, they don't come to the site again to vote ?

b - I don’t remember if the fact that we receive free votes credits is explained on Vuo’s Welcome window on first launch, or if it’s included on the Vuo billing receipt, but perhaps some people don’t even know it ?

c - And for me the BIGGEST REASON, as I said earlier, is the fact we have the feeling votes DON’T count, that in the end, the VUO TEAM CHOOSES its new features based on some mysterious criteria, that ONLY ONE top voted feature implementation is not enough because this means the features they would vote for are so deep in the list that it WOULD TAKE YEARS before an update included their wishes.

I do for example have about 60 votes to go. One reason I did not use them is because I first wanted you to answer my email to get your feedback on the request system, but mainly because of all the points mentioned above. Why should I ? And this is why I’m writing these long answer and thinking night and day on how this could be made better :)

Concerning the Polls, yeah, to receive a poll per email that is only available for a week or something, I don’t think it’s the best idea. That’s why I LOVE the fact that the website now mentions « Vote to help us plan Vuo 1.3 ».
I mean, you should still send people an email to tell them when new a new Vuo version is available ! It’s an organisation, but you guys also need some commercial stuff in order for this community to even survive.
But if Polls worked quite great, perhaps you could still send out some of them sometimes to the people who wants to receive them and turn the results into votes for the feature requests. Again, not OR but BOTH.

I also understand what you mean by not resetting the votes at every release. I did not previously mean to reset the votes made on the feature requests, but the votes left in our user counter. But the way it actually works is great too ! The fact that we can sum the unused credits left is actually great. So that was a mistake from me !

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4 - CONCERNING THE DIFFERENT TIME IT TAKES TO IMPLEMENT FEATURE REQUESTS :

Ok, this is an important point I did not really consider. But I believe there must be a more reliable solution than the actual ONLY 1 top voted feature request if we want the community to vote.

What would happen if the number 1 top voted request was « Windows Exporting apps » ? Could it be released in Vuo 1.2 in august ? I think not !?!
And ok, some of the feature requests are bigger than others, but not all top requests are the biggest of them all am I wrong ?

Quite a complicated point, I must admit !

Perhaps, in some feature, the feature request list could also be splitted into major and minor feature release based on your analyze on how much work they need ? And to add 1 major feature + 4 minor features ?!?

Or should the Vuo Team stricly consider the 5 top voted requests and start to work on them no matter what time they need to be released ? I mean the big ones would skip some release but would already be moved to the « chosen to be implemented list » ? Not sure about this !

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But Hey ! couldn’t this NEXT IDEA SOUND GREAT : Couldn’t the feature request system then be something CLEAN and SIMPLE like this ? :

Every new release, the Vuo Team will add 5 community top voted request features + 5 new features from that same list they personally voted for because they think these are must-haves for the feature of Vuo (+ 5 pledged community features if you consider having both free and pledged votes).

To plan the roadmap at each release, we will analyze the top 5 voted requests and try to match those results and its order to the closest possible way.

Because, as we plan to update Vuo frequently (every 2-3 months) and because not all the feature requests require the same amount of time to be worked on (some features may take a year to be implemented), we cannot guarantee that the top 5 voted requests are reliable to be added within this small amount of time.

This is why we will try at least to add the number 1 request, and add 4 other ones by going the result list down and fill it with every of them we think are possible to be seen in the next update.

Consider therefore that the fact that a request would be high in the list would not guarantee its immediate implementation in the next release. But you can also consider that we take note of the top voted requests and start working on them in the background to be able to add them as soon as possible.

So the Vuo 1.2 release perhaps would have looked like something like this

Isn’t that something people would want to see implemented before my Drag File to App feature (even if I don’t need pinch zoom or projection at all, I try to think for the community instead of for my own) ?

I really hope to have your feedback on this idea !

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Anyway, if I can do something more then I’m doing right now beside sharing my ideas, make some composition and spread the word, just tell me, I’d be glad to help.
I don’t (yet) code but I can work on some graphic ideas, some site layouts, some buttons, Icons or wathever.

I also would like to help with some questions you could have and give an external point of view, or give some feedback on bugs or improvements (I will also make a request to be a Vuo Integrator)

It will not really reflect the community its wishes, but also some really personal one's :(

(I could for example vote my 50 credits left for one of my personal request, and at the next update vote 25 credits for that same request again, pushing that request kinda high in the actual request list).

should the votes not also (or only) analyze how MANY people voted instead of how MUCH they voted ?

Recently there's been an increase in voter participation — most days in the last 2 weeks, multiple people have cast votes. So perhaps that problem is solved by the increased participation.

Perhaps, in some feature, the feature request list could also be splitted into major and minor feature release based on your analyze on how much work they need ? And to add 1 major feature + 4 minor features ?!?

We're planning to add a difficulty indication to each feature request, and perhaps list them separately on the overview page based on difficulty.

For example I don't know how much the Vuo Team voted for the #3 to request, but it's #3 with only 1 user + the Vuo Team Load and play animated 3D meshes So nut sure it represents the global community its wishes ...

Team Vuo gave that feature request 10 votes, based on its rank in a community poll. So all votes on that feature request directly represent the wishes of many community members. (I just updated the Moderator Note on that feature request to mention that.)

my vote for a cleaner vuo pricing.
Is a little upsetting to pay for an upgrade ( when I just payed for a lic. ) maybe one vuo version , one yearly fee for subscription to updates.
new or improve nodes gear to creative programming ( particle systems) graphic filters, etc. simplify node usage. ( like QC render to image )
vuo is great but for a new user feels a little wild.

balam, thanks for your input. It always helps to know what people do and don't like about Vuo so we (Team Vuo) can make it better.

Back in December we changed the pricing/subscription structure in response to people's feedback. We're continuing to look at how well it's working. I expect there will be more changes in the future, so we'll keep your idea in mind.

Particle systems would be great to have! There's a feature request open for voting. In the meantime, there's VJ SATOSHI's node in the Node Gallery. For graphic filters and simplifying node usage, could you elaborate on what you have in mind? Or better yet, I encourage you to create feature requests so the community can vote on them.